ThiefHott Too much of everything

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Fred S. (fredschroeder-63011) This movie was a perfect symbol for the Hollywood it took place in. In 1952 Hollywood was filled with star actors and actresses, aiming to show their lives but ending up exaggerating the truth. this movie provided a look into the deepness, the bad within the beautiful of Hollywood. The amoral Hollywood producer intends to bring together the three former associates: an actress, a writer and a director, for his new project. The plot is told through their flashbacks, showing how the aforementioned producer during their careers mercilessly exploited. It is interesting to see what is actually happening in this "city of illusions". The story may not be true, but a number of illusions can capture the imagination. The plot wasn't particularly grasping however, it was a sort of dry truth.

SnoopyStyle Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) tells James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) that their mutual former friend, the hated producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), wants to produce a new movie with the their help. On his own, Jonathan couldn't raise a nickel anymore. The movie flashbacks as each one of them recount their lives with the scheming Jonathan. Director Fred Amiel meets Shields when he put on a funeral for his loner father. They rise together as Shields schemes to get producer Pebbel to hire them. However, Shields would eventually double cross him taking away a movie to a bigger director. Beautiful star Georgia Lorrison started off as a hungry bit actress haunted by her late great father. Her life is a drunken mess and Shields confronts her. Under his nurturing care, she becomes a big star and she falls for him. However he rejects her possessiveness and tells her that he was just handling her after catching him with another woman. Bartlow was a small college professor who wrote a best seller book. Shields bought the rights and hires him as the screenwriter but his annoying wife keeps getting into the way. Shields hires a gigolo actor to distract her and they run off together getting killed in a plane crash. Shields eventually tells him which he uses to write a Pulitzer Prize winning book. All three have grudges but Pebbel points out that Shields made each one of them into the stars that they are today.The big guessing game is what each one of these characters are based on. That's half the fun of this movie. Without that, this is a solid melodrama. The splitting of the movie into three does take away the flow. Sometime around the third section, I lost a little bit of interest. I think it started with the overzealous acting at the end of Lana Turner's section. I would have switched the order of the three sections since that confrontation seems to be so climatic with the writer being second and Lana Turner being the last. After the Douglas and Turner blowup, there's nowhere for the movie to go except to wrap up.

Applause Meter Lana Turner abandoned developing her talent into becoming a good actress early in her career when still a teen-age starlet. Here a mature Lana puts out her usual wooden performance, an actress always acting, always conveying to the audience that she is Lana Turner, Sex Goddess and Movie Star. Kirk Douglas is fierce and dictatorial, a character type he excels at and could probably play in his sleep. Dick Powell is a bland presence in every movie he's in. Walter Pigeon is in it too. Aren't he and Melvyn Douglas the same person? Barry Sullivan, a competent B movie actor, has a role. Gilbert Roland is thrown in for effect to represent the generic Latin Lover female moviegoers traditionally swoon over. Gloria Grahame shows up too, always the "dame," in this case a Southern belle one fluttering and flitting all over the place; and the Academy honored her with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1952!That takes care of the cast. As for the story, well it's supposed to be an inside look at Hollywood wheelers and dealers, star making, and breaking, glory takers and those on the down escalator to failure. It's the real story, exposed! Wrong. It is so full of clichés and tired old tropes, stereotypes--- everything that the public anticipates and comfortably accepts in a fictionalized story purported to be drawn on "real life" events and people. All the soap opera melodrama bursts out of it everywhere making scenes meant to be taken seriously more like comedic spoofs from Saturday Night Live. And the Academy honored this with a Best Screenplay Oscar for 1952!The weepy, poignant musical score by David Raksin serves as the baleful icing dripping off this collapsed cake. To say that this is not director Vincent Minelli's best effort is an understatement. He made a lot of good movies. This should be relegated to the bottom of the heap.

PimpinAinttEasy Pretty searing portrayal of life in Hollywood. But the film is ultimately upbeat despite featuring a lot of dark moments. An earnest director (WALTER PIDGEON), a self destructive actress (LANA TURNER) and an indifferent writer (DICK POWELL) all come into contact with an ambitious producer (KIRK DOUGLAS). The film seems to say that ultimately films get made due to the ambition, ruthlessness and drive of the producer. In a way, the film lauds the Hollywood studio system while also showing its dark and ruthless side.VINCENT MINELLI uses a lot of tracking shots, it really is a great film to look at. LANA TURNER and ELAINE STEWART look sensational. GLORIA GRAHAME is a bit of a disappointment as the bimbo wife of DICK POWELL. KIRK DOUGLAS and DICK POWELL made the film for me.